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June

I always loved this quote of “Give ‘em hell, Harry” Truman’s: “I fired General MacArthur because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals…” As the Saturday Review put it in… read more

Ever since I can remember, I’ve Ioved this simple, soothing poem by Robert Frost. I first wrote about it a few years ago. But its message fits so beautifully with summer, I thought I’d repeat it… The Pasture “I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And… read more

“LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE” The British poet, George Herbert (1593 -1633) wrote those words a few hundred years ago. I believe in “living well,” – however each of us might define that – but the question of course, is “Wait a second, what did Herbert mean by ‘revenge’? Revenge for what??” Robert Frost… read more

You may have heard this story about Michelangelo: Soon after he’d finished sculpting the statue of David, word went out throughout Europe and beyond that this was his greatest, greatest work. As the story goes, a rich patron of the arts who lived perhaps a hundred miles away, heard these raves and thought to himself,… read more

I can’t remember when I first heard the phrase, “We become what we hate…” I think it was in a college philosophy class. It hit me pretty hard at the time. Still does. And not surprisingly, now more than ever. “Hate” seems to have taken the upper hand. The “hateful” things going on “out there”… read more

It was a cold, windy morning in early January. I was riding my bike as I did every morning when I was a little girl, to a small school in Florida that I attended for a few months each winter. I’d had pneumonia as an infant and doctors had warned my parents that it would be… read more

The Cynics - the dream-busters, hope-dashers; the people who never see the light at the end of the tunnel or spot the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow after the storm… are multiplying at an alarming rate. Cynics are more dangerous than pessimists. Pessimists merely spend their energy assuming the worst; they don’t… read more

Look, this is the season for “speeches” – and you might be giving one. Or at least be expected to make a toast – or say something in front of a bunch of people. There are engagement parties, rehearsal dinners, wedding receptions, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, summer office parties – celebrations of all sorts – where saying something is the order of… read more

I discovered this poem a week ago written on a piece of ragged, yellowed-with-age paper; tucked into a dog-eared copy of A Collection of Poems by William Butler Yeats… At first I was puzzled. “Where the heck did this come from?” I wondered. Then I recognized the untidy, flamboyant writing. It was mine. There was a barely legible date at the top: Sept.13,… read more

He was known simply as Hip No.85. He had a tiny scrape on the back of a front ankle that was beginning to swell and every time a prospective buyer came to take a look at him at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale in upstate New York, their offer was lower than the one before. But… read more